Pubdate: Tue, 09 Oct 2007
Source: Daily Campus, The (UConn, CT Edu)
Copyright: 2007 ThesDaily Campus
Contact:  http://www.dailycampus.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2778
Author: Chris Donnelly
Note: Staff Columnist Chris Donnelly is a 5th-semester sociology and 
political science double major.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

WAR ON DRUGS IS A WAR ON THE POOR

One of the favorite pastimes of the American government is to wage a 
righteous, divine and equally idiotic war on drugs. The government 
loves it so much that they have an entire agency devoted to it - the 
DEA - and countless other organizations that jump in for fun. The 
reality of the situation is that this so called "war" on drugs - 
though in fact a war - is not against substances, but the poor and 
economically-disadvantaged of our society.

There is a massive dose of paranoia in American culture about drugs. 
Sure they are bad and destroy lives, but hey, so do cars. If there is 
really going to be this much effort put forth this much effort to 
combat an epidemic that as we can all see is sweeping across the 
American landscape like a wildfire, then there should be full cavity 
searches every time someone enters a public building and submission 
to daily blood and urine tests.

The basic and most fundamental reason why the government and 
contemporary society is so interested in purging this threat to 
mankind is that large amounts of drug is known to occur in the poorer 
subsets of society. And nothing angers a rich white guy more than 
having to see someone poor walking on their streets, so they get 
thrown in a cage for a couple months.

A case in point is the dichotomy between crack and cocaine. Crack 
cocaine carries with it much stiffer penalties than cocaine, and 
enforcement of anti-crack laws has been pushed in recent years. One 
only needs to look at the usual clientele of crack users, a wide 
majority of which are poor minorities, to see why. It's easy and 
convenient to target groups who use crack - being commonly segregated 
as they are in low income areas. Its also easier to throw them in the 
slammer instead of that stock broker who is having a cocaine power 
hour before he's off from lunch to go impoverish some other third world nation.

The evidence is two-fold: not only do affluent white people not get 
arrested as often for illicit drug possession, but the poor and 
minorities of our society are often caged into situations where the 
only way the can make a substantive living is to sell drugs.

This is clearly illustrated in the Uniform Crime Report statistics 
for Connecticut, where the poster-child of Fairfield Country, the 
ambivalent and caring town of Westport had 26 total drug violations 
in 2002, versus the picturesque home of that other university that 
takes our parking spots on the weekend, Willimantic, which had 222 
arrests in the same year.

It is obvious the poor have been caged in to a particular lifestyle 
from which they cannot emerge and this notion has been supported with 
study after study.

A common conservative argument is that if poor people really wanted 
to succeed in life, they would work harder and pull themselves up by 
their bootstraps. On the contrary, many of these individuals have 
tried to succeed legitimately, and due to the poor quality of 
education offered in these neighborhoods - and the real life dangers 
they face every day - many of these individuals cannot gain a better 
life through socially accepted channels. As surprising as it may 
seem, working at McDonalds isn't going to pay the bills.

The solution to this cyclical conundrum is simple: either legalize 
drugs already or make all mind-altering substances illegal. 
Cigarettes alone kill "more people in the United States each year 
than car accidents, alcohol, AIDS, murders, illegal drugs and 
suicides combined" according to a University of Pennsylvania study, 
and they have been legal for centuries.

So instead of adding to the already overcrowded, ironically titled 
'corrections' system - as if throwing someone in a cage is going to 
'correct' them - in following the American notions of greed and 
avarice, just legitimize the source and tax it. This goes hand in 
hand with many American capitalist notions; Americans are good at 
profiting from death, hence the war in Iraq, the massive arms, 
alcohol and tobacco industries.

So in order to make things simple for once in this country, where 
states such as Connecticut still have laws on the books that make 
biking over 65 miles per hour illegal, either legalize everything, or 
make all substances illegal and actually enforce the law.

While the latter would be optimal for the welfare and benefit for all 
of its citizens, the government would not do something that rendered 
no profits.

Staff Columnist Chris Donnelly is a 5th-semester sociology and 
political science double major.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman